I posted the following on the question topic but have not received an answer. I'm hoping that reposting it here will help.

==================

I have installed SafelyRemove on a new server running Windows Server 2003 R2. I am able to see all of the drives, including the ones I am trying to remove (there are 5 SATA II drives in an external enclosure that is hot swap ready).

However, every time I try to remove the drive it tells me it is not able to do so. It does not find any program with locks on the data.

Any idea what is going on? Is there a bug here? I thought the product was capable of managing SATA drives.

I was reviewing other posts in this forum. "Trying to use with PCI Sata Controllers" posted by enuro12 is the exact issue I have (although a different Silicon Image chipset). I am using a PCIe SATA II controller based on SiI3124.

As was mentioned in another post, the Silicon Image chipsets support hotswap. However, they foolishly do not enable any functionality to easily remove the devices in their drivers. Based on a document I obtained from Microsoft, "Windows Platform Design Notes: Designing Hardware for Surprise Removal under Windows XP", it's clearly possible.

If you can help resolve this issue with SafelyRemove, you will make a lot of people happy and open a large market for your product.

I was reviewing other posts in this forum. "Trying to use with PCI Sata Controllers" posted by enuro12 is the exact issue I have (although a different Silicon Image chipset). I am using a PCIe SATA II controller based on SiI3124.

As was mentioned in another post, the Silicon Image chipsets support hotswap. However, they foolishly do not enable any functionality to easily remove the devices in their drivers. Based on a document I obtained from Microsoft, "Windows Platform Design Notes: Designing Hardware for Surprise Removal under Windows XP", it's clearly possible.

If you can help resolve this issue with SafelyRemove, you will make a lot of people happy and open a large market for your product

Hello! Thank you for your question!
Yes, we know about this bug and we will fix it in the next version - 4.0 (I hope it will be released in a one-two monthes). If you are interested in beta-testing of this functionality we can notify you when we will have a release with ability to stop Silicon Image SATA.

I too have the same issue with the SiI3124 on a server 2003 box. I tried the version 4 beta 5 of safely remove and it only will disable the device listed in device manager. That is something you can do in device manager and it doesn't fix the issue. It propmts you and says, "...it's driver doesn't support the authentic "safe removal" feature." After a reboot, it will still come up and rebuild the array, which with 2.7tb worth of data it can take almost 30 hours. Luckily I have a test box with empty hard drives (so around 10 minutes). However it does detect the device so that is a good start. You first have to go into the options and check the box "Display all storage devices" listed under "Devices Selection" within the "General" page. I'm definitely interested in future updates now that I know you guys are working on this.

ADDITIOINAL INFO:
I have noticed with this setup that if you create the array with the SATARAID5 software that they include, it will not cause a problem when you reboot. The problem arises when you partition it in windows. It is basically useleess unless you can map to it, so you have to partition it. I have tried all combinations of the windows disk management and have had no luck when rebooting. I still want to try partitioning with non-windows software and seeing if I can map to it from windows, and I want to look at generic drivers. But aside from that, I have loaded all the versions of drivers from Silicon Images website and none of them provide you with the ability to use the "safely remove..." feature. In the Policies tab of the device properties, it does mention, "...to disconnect this device from the computer, click the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the taskbar notification area." It is in the description for "Optimize for performance" and it is grayed out. Also, this section has "Enable write caching on the disk" checked. If you uncheck the option and reboot, it will display, "this option cannot be changed on this device." I'm wondering if you were to disable the write caching if the problem would go away. Is that something you can attach to the Safely Remove application?

I'd love to see a solution and I am available to test and answer any questions regarding this topic.

I too have the same issue with the SiI3124 on a server 2003 box. I tried the version 4 beta 5 of safely remove and it only will disable the device listed in device manager. That is something you can do in device manager and it doesn't fix the issue. It propmts you and says, "...it's driver doesn't support the authentic "safe removal" feature." After a reboot, it will still come up and rebuild the array, which with 2.7tb worth of data it can take almost 30 hours.

We implemented "safe removal" via disabling for devices that doesn't support "safe removal" because in case of SATA drives disabling helps to prepare devices to hot-swap. At least it helps in case of Silicon Image SATA drives mentioned earlier on our forum.

Am I understand right that in your case disabling of this device doesn't prepare it to hot-swap?

Have you tried to ask support of Silicon Images on how to prepare the device to hot-unplug? AFAIK they write in datasheet that their devices support hot-unplug, so probably they now how to do this. We need any information on how to stop such devices, so I'm interesting about this.

Quote:

In the Policies tab of the device properties, it does mention, "...to disconnect this device from the computer, click the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the taskbar notification area." It is in the description for "Optimize for performance" and it is grayed out. Also, this section has "Enable write caching on the disk" checked. If you uncheck the option and reboot, it will display, "this option cannot be changed on this device." I'm wondering if you were to disable the write caching if the problem would go away. Is that something you can attach to the Safely Remove application?

Yes, we can do cache flushing, but I'm not sure that it helps to solve the problem. The drive will not be spun down, so it may cause problems

Have you tried to ask support of Silicon Images on how to prepare the device to hot-unplug? AFAIK they write in datasheet that their devices support hot-unplug, so probably they now how to do this. We need any information on how to stop such devices, so I'm interesting about this.

It's not hot-swappable (or shutdown-able) yet.

I've been working with one of the tech's at DAT Optic for quite some time now. He often tells me that 'the engineer said to try this', so I know it's not just a helpdesk tech answering emails.

Now that I have a good test environment, I will hopefully be able to help them to help us figure this out. They sold me the equipment below and work with Silicon Image (Silicon Image sent me to Dat Optic when i tried to get support from them).

They have had me try to disable the SATA device, the RAID card, and I am waiting on their reply from my latest discoveries.

Quote:

Yes, we can do cache flushing, but I'm not sure that it helps to solve the problem. The drive will not be spun down, so it may cause problems

This was just an idea that I thought I'd like to try. I've read that in most cases, using SATA disables this feature by default and won't let you enable it. In my case, it is just the opposite. DAT Optic also said that uninstalling the disk drive, will make the system check and make sure all the caches are written. They said that it will insure that the RAID data is not in the buffer when the system is shut down and there won't be any corrupted data. I still get the "RAID group was not shutdown properly" and "restore redundancy" (rebuilds the array) entries in the event log. I've tried uninstalling and disabling the disk drive and no luck.

I'll update you with their reply (sometimes they take their time). And please let me know your thoughts.

Thanks,
Matt[/url]

Last edited by matt on Fri Jul 18, 2008 5:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I forgot to mention that I ran across another case like this that has some other details that spring up questions in my mind. They talk about how SATA devices are treated in Windows and mention the caching...and again, no solution (big suprise )I'm not sure if it's of any use to you, but if you have a sec, check it out.

I'll update you with their reply (sometimes they take their time). And please let me know your thoughts.

Matt, thank you very much for so detailed response!

Honestly now I do not have any idea how to help you, because the device you mentioned above is non hot-swappable and I do not see any program ways how to stop it. Probably I will have any ideas after the reply from Silicon Images.

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot post attachments in this forum